FROM THIS EPISODE

With the FBI investigating widespread brutality in LA County jails, Sheriff Lee Baca has appointed an outsider to reform the system, the nation's largest. We ask Terri McDonald how she can change a culture notorious for sanctioning the violent treatment of inmates by guards. Can she put an end to abusive treatment -- when it's reinforced by a code of silence? Also, housing markets in Southern California are on the rebound, in places hit hard by the sub-prime mortgage crisis and in affluent areas as well. We hear what it means for home owners and renters. On our rebroadcast of today's To the Point, is President Obama raising hopes for Middle East peace?

Southern California was especially vulnerable to the real estate bubble, and the median prices of single family homes -- the point at which half of all homes are more expensive and half are cheaper -- plunged in many places. In Compton, the median of $385,000 dropped to $94,000 in 2009, but crawled back up to $185,000 by the end of last year. But low income areas aren't the only places where there's a comeback. In LA's Hancock Park, they're up 85 percent, in the Newport Coast of Orange County, they're up 80 percent. That means a lot of real estate action.

Last fall a blue-ribbon commission blamed Sheriff Lee Baca for violence against inmates at LA County jails. The general counsel said, "If he doesn't fix the jails, [Baca] should not be re-elected." Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, who ran the jails, has announced his retirement, and Baca has appointed an outsider to assume responsibility for nine facilities that house more than 18,000 inmates. Terri McDonald, formerly with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, is now the Assistant Sheriff overseeing the Custody Division.